Scientists in the UK announced Thursday that they’ll be deploying armies of maggots to aid wounded soldiers in war-torn countries such as Syria, Yemen and South Sudan, the Telegraph reports. Apparently, these flesh-eating creepy crawlers can serve to disinfect open wounds — by gobbling up the dead human tissue and leaving behind their anti-bacterial saliva — potentially saving life and limb.

In fact, this medieval medical practice traces back to early man. Australian aboriginal cultures once employed this macabre method, which was also used more recently, during World War I. Even now, “maggot therapy” is used in some US hospitals to clean wounds and trim dead tissue, reportedly working even faster than surgeons can.

“People living through conflict and humanitarian crisis are still dying from wounds that could so easily be healed with the right access to care,” Parliament member Penny Mordaunt, UK secretary of state for international development, tells the Telegraph.

The $250,000 project will begin by setting up small maggot farms in field hospitals, where they’ll be incubated from eggs to larvae in a sterile environment. Although they can’t be used twice (to do so would risk the spread of infection), these fly babies only take a couple of days to grow. Once they mature into flies, they’re naturally sterilized again, making them safe to release into the wild.

“Project Maggot” scientists estimate some 250 wounds will be treated per day. By 2021, they even plan to deliver DIY maggot farms to remote and developing communities in need of sustainable medical care.

Frank Stadler, Ph.D., a research fellow at Griffith University in Australia and a scientist on the project, also tells the Telegraph, “Making people healthy so that they can remain productive members of their community is sometimes almost more important than saving a life.”